Do not fear — if the autumn is long,
it will not be eternal;
in fact,
this is just what you have to fear.
December with disfigured face,
and I with icy hands,
And you mixed up in the scent of lilacs,
and with hair the color of wet cherries,
and with other trash,
other junk,
other lies.
* * *
I wanted a cure — too late:
the cough and the cold disappeared.
I’ll call my puppy Bismark,
and pour champagne on the asters.
The path to madness lies close
in January’s dry midday.
The snows on the fir trees have ripened.
Shall we knock them down tonight?
It’s so inexpressibly charming
to look at your legs,
that if one looks past them,
one loses the meaning of vision.
You must have got better,
I don’t remember you this way.
If I couldn’t know at all, but it’s too late.
And if you press your palms
to your eyes, and removing them, look
at the stars — they are like chandeliers.
I mixed all the lines up — what for.
You might just as well
tangle your shoelaces up.
Can’t sleep. In the nooks of the brain
it’s all you; and, counting the minutes,
I lose the count only toward morning…
Failed sonnet
You walked round.
I walked through.
Whispering of feelings,
I hurt my jaw.
I fired shots (here’s the rhyme: without aiming).
You walked in the middle.
I turned the corner.
All feelings are simple:
pencil or charcoal.
Sporadic simplicity —
I was scaring off pride.
But is there a point weaving
speeches about this!
When your hands touched my neck
less often in autumn than my scarf,
from where came the hope
that the rivers would freeze in the winter?
All feelings are simple.
Only poses are complex.
We lived through autumn
to the white payoff.
And the frosts have a scent — of frost.
And the color of rain was terribly rainy.
* * *
I have still lost
the value of my words
so often admitting
dead
made-up
stillborn feelings —
lost them
for which I was punished
by solitude
in another icy january
by salt
by an empty horizon
by snow
by the husky voice
of solitude
depression’s unkempt goblin
misery’s green corner
words are all quite
worthless
never mind
tomorrow morning
a girl with a lazy smile
will look at me in the tram
she won’t like me
but something will interest her
before she leaves the tram
she’ll turn around again
and our eyes will meet
outside
catching up with her
I’ll say
in my home there are many boring books
I also have handcuffs
and some money for a bottle of beer
I’m a poet and also I can
play Vertinsky on the guitar
(your fingers smell of incense)
I can play something about your fingers
* * *
I still hope: like a child
who breaks a vase and freezes in horror
wishing it would come together
by itself and go back to the sideboard.
Reading books, I still dream
and still believe that life
and death will sort things out
and I — alone — will be left innocent.
I still hope. And hope
does not soothe me,
but slightly embitters me.
* * *
and at the slave market in Ancient Rome
where the smell makes you sick
at the noisy, savage market
the son of a patrician
eccentric and conceited
I wander with my slave boy
and you are there
in the crowd of slaves for sale
dirty and angry
you turn away and close your eyes
but I saw you two thousand years later
I recognized you at once
and bought by me
you are the only one who has the right
to come to me in the mornings
when I am still asleep
you bring me berries and juices
and of all imaginable grief on earth
I am only tormented by one
when a cherry stone
gets caught in my front teeth
White dreams
July was swarthy,
but August was white,
and dreams were white.
The whole earth turned pale or grey,
as though it had eaten henbane.
And we felt uneasy
because of all this whiteness.
White as a ghost,
covered with a sheet,
you slept, curled up like a cat,
and waking up, charmingly angry,
sent curses to mosquitoes,
amusing and obscene.
In sleep your head was spinning
and so was something older.
You barely breathed,
thrashing the bed without mercy,
blowing away yesterday’s narcosis
with your breath.
Your hand called out for mine,
like a bird looks for food,
like dried-out grass craves rain,
I gave my hand, although you slept,
you intertwined your palm in mine
tenderly and lightly.
Burnt by you into ashes
I got used to the quivering of eyes.
In love with you — in a swampy mire,
in your love — in the heavenly heights.
And in the lines of fate and life
our sweat trickled down.
From the wind the censer smoke
entered the open window.
And birds walked on the tables
and drank our wine.
* * *
I lost my matches.
I lost the box, I say.
I lost the feeling of frailty,
the fatality of being.
Insolent as a weed,
I stand in the wet wind.
Happiness, how huge you are.
Where can I hide you?
I have no sense of cold or slush.
The shroud of the wind,
the mist and snow don’t reach me.